Time Machine - To full restore or not to full restore?

[Stewj2023]

I recently purchased a new Mac Mini M2 (2023) to replace my aging iMac (2013) running OS 10.15 (Catalina) which was keeping me three OS versions behind. When I got the Mini all setup and turned on, I made the snap decision to do a full restore from Time Machine and a short while later I was sitting at my new computer looking at my old computer because at first glance, everything restored just as it was on the old machine. I suppose this could be considered a complete success but now, a couple weeks later, I'm worried if I made the right choice since there was a three version OS step up and I'm occasionally seeing anomalies like short freeze ups, "Can't Save" message when making some settings changes, etc. Nothing catastrophic just small annoying things.

Now I'm questioning if I should have done the full time machine restore or if I should have gone at it manually and cherry picked the data (i.e. photos, emails, documents, etc.) I wanted to restore to a "New" and clean OS. Actually now considering rolling everything back and doing a fresh install of Ventura and starting from scratch.

Anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on this or am I just over thinking it?

 

[Stewj2023]

I recently purchased a new Mac Mini M2 (2023) to replace my aging iMac (2013) running OS 10.15 (Catalina) which was keeping me three OS versions behind. When I got the Mini all setup and turned on, I made the snap decision to do a full restore from Time Machine and a short while later I was sitting at my new computer looking at my old computer because at first glance, everything restored just as it was on the old machine. I suppose this could be considered a complete success but now, a couple weeks later, I'm worried if I made the right choice since there was a three version OS step up and I'm occasionally seeing anomalies like short freeze ups, "Can't Save" message when making some settings changes, etc. Nothing catastrophic just small annoying things.

Now I'm questioning if I should have done the full time machine restore or if I should have gone at it manually and cherry picked the data (i.e. photos, emails, documents, etc.) I wanted to restore to a "New" and clean OS. Actually now considering rolling everything back and doing a fresh install of Ventura and starting from scratch.

Anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on this or am I just over thinking it?

Follow-up... Well, after a couple extra weeks of disappointment, I decided to pull the trigger and wipe the new Mac Mini back to a clean new machine. That was definitely the correct decision! It only took ma a short while to download all the programs I use then to restore my personal data (documents, photos, etc.). The "new" machine is head and shoulders better than the previous restored version. It was nice to have that Time Machine backup but I learned that a full restore for more than one OS version is probably not a good idea.